Local Exhibits

John Fudge: Double Take

Rule Gallery

November 16 - December 29, 2018

Opening reception: Friday November 16 from 6-9pm

John Fudge - Bob and Teenage Connie in Tibet - 1994

Double Take is the second posthumous solo exhibition of work by John Fudge presented by the gallery. This show will include a range of paintings spanning the artist’s career from the mid-1960’s to the late 1990’s. Fudge’s works pose a challenge to classify: called everything from ‘neo-surrealist’ to ‘semi-pop’ to simply ‘bizarre’ and leave the viewers with no common definition. His subjects range from the provocative to the outlandish to the irreverent and compel viewers to take a second, or even a third look while unraveling the artists’ off-beat humor into his strange and personal world. As Fudge said of his work: “I want to give the viewer something to think about as well as something to look at. I want to serve up a meal, not just a glass of water.”

John Fudge (b. 1940, d. 1999) was a long time fixture in the Colorado art scene, whose heavy influence on the region began in Boulder in the late 50’s, where he was a BFA student, through his untimely death in 1999. He was involved with several of the most significant efforts taken by Colorado artists in that time, including Drop City, Criss Cross and the founding of Spark Gallery. As a professor of art at CU Boulder and CU Denver for decades, he left an indelible mark on his art students. Fudge was very much an artist of his era, borrowing pop themes and assembling them into works that fall somewhere between contemporary gothic and cartoon modern. His work has been collected by such notable places as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Washington State Arts Commission, the Denver Art Museum and The Kirkland Museum of Fine and Decorative Arts, in Colorado, and the Weatherspoon Art Museum in North Carolina among others. Fudge received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1985 and a Western States Arts Foundation Fellowship in 1976.

RULE Gallery, founded in 1991, has locations in Denver, CO and Marfa, TX. RULE represents emerging and mid-career contemporary artists and artist estates, with a focus on fostering investigative art practices while developing artists’ long-term careers. Outside their robust in-house exhibition schedule, RULE coordinates programming in prominent institutions and non-traditional settings, expanding community engagement with the work. In addition, the gallery actively endeavors to bring greater recognition of the region’s historic art movements to a broader audience. The gallery has locations in Denver, Colorado, and Marfa, Texas. For more information, visit www.rulegallery.com